


Empty

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Dokken, Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Nightmares, meaningful dream, weird dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 08:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14516541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Jeff Pilson has a weird and disturbing dream after one of the most difficult nights of his life as Dokken is pulled apart a second time with the departure of a certain guitarist and he loses who he once considered his closest friend and more. Through the messy dreamscape, he realizes that despite the hurt and damage, the love still remains. (References to "Falling Again", but can stand alone too.)





	1. Standing in the Night Alone

Jeff Pilson felt reality slipping away slowly as he finally began succumbing to fitful sleep in his bed at the hotel after a very difficult night.

He had decided this was the hardest night he'd ever experienced in Dokken. He'd had nights before that had been rough, but those nights in the 80s were clouded over by the cocaine, quite often some amount of alcohol too, and the details would be fuzzy by morning. They'd hurt, but he'd forget them.

The night before they'd broken up the first time in 1989, Jeff could barely remember. He remembered getting a bunch of drugs to numb himself up, nobody speaking to each other, and everyone being stressed, ready for an end, but very sad about it. However, he couldn't remember what his actual thoughts had been in those days, or what he'd done. It was under a haze of white dust too far in the distance to see through.

This time was different. It wasn't a true breakup. Just a missing space left by one departure.

Mick was with them. He was just on the other side of the wall. Depending on what bed he'd taken, his headboard was possibly flush with Jeff's headboard and only with the wall separating them.

Don was even closer. He was in the other bed beside Jeff's -just two feet separating them.

Jeff knew Don was there, but he couldn't see him through the dark or hear him over the hum of the air vent in the room.

And then there was nothing.

Some odd hours later, he found himself sitting up from a sprawled position in the back seat of a rented van like one the band would sometimes rent whilst in one town for a few days. It was bright and dark outside at the same time. An overcast sky stretched out ahead over the car with grey, rolling clouds, but they seemed bright in places where the sun was shining behind them.

Jeff blinked. He couldn't look at it -it felt too bright and burned his eyes. Looking out the window, he saw the studio building. He was in the parking lot of their studio where he'd last been as Don and Mick were up in the office with management dealing with final decisions on a change in lineup.

_What day is it? Did I oversleep and have Mick end up putting me in the van to the studio and leaving me out here until I woke up?_

At least he thought that was what had happened, though he couldn't remember having overslept so soundly since the 80s. Mick wasn't always the one to carry him out to the van on the times they hadn't been able to wake him, but that he was still out in the van and not carried inside too told him it had probably been Mick.

Jeff slowly pushed the door of the van open, finding it unlocked. It swung open with an unexpected loud screech that made him shiver. Despite the cold look to the weather from inside the car, Jeff found it to be much different upon opening the door. It was hot and muggy. The pavement looked wet from earlier rain, and moisture hung in the air so thick that Jeff could feel his hair and clothes beginning to stick to him. Feeling dizzy as he did, he sprinted lightly across the parking lot and through the doors to the studio building to get inside, only to be met with another baffling sight.

Everything looked really dark. It was hard to see, but looking up to see if the ceiling lights were off, Jeff felt his eyes burn and his head ache again as his sight met several fluorescent light sticks with hot, white rays of light flooding out from around them in rings. 

He couldn't hear anybody playing anything either, and he'd at least expected to hear Mick and Don faintly joking around if nothing else.

"Mick?" he asked aloud, feeling like he could barely hear himself speak. _"Don? ...Mick?"_

It was barely any louder when Jeff tried more forcefully, and he heard no response, so he decided to go in and look.

As he stepped forward, he flinched as his footstep echoed so loudly when he hadn't realized his foot had even contacted the ground.

It was then that Jeff realized he was dreaming. It had to have been the weirdest dream he'd ever had in just the short time passed he was aware of, and he had the strange feeling that it was only going to get weirder.

Jeff had learned certain things to look for during disturbing dreams to prove it wasn't reality, and all of them were there. It was something he'd learned to do in his drug-saturated days when he could get some weird, paranoia-driven dreams and be too drugged up to snap awake and get himself out of it. He couldn't feel his feet on the ground despite seeing and hearing them hit the ground with every step. Instead, he felt like he was floating when he walked. Clocks of any kind wouldn't display the time right. As he looked to his watch, Jeff saw broken digits first, then a blur that he couldn't read at all. Lights seemed brighter than they should have been -even in a dimly lit place, looking up at a light fixture directly practically blinded him. Sometimes things happening around him that should have made a lot of noise were silent, and things that should have made very little noise became unbearably loud. 

Without the influence of drugs that had caused those dreams in the past, Jeff could add a new sign to that list he hadn't noticed before: being somewhere, but having no idea or the slightest clue as to how he'd managed to get there or where he'd been before then.

Despite knowing it was a dream, and not even being drugged this time, Jeff couldn't wake up or snap himself out of it as hard as he was trying now. Maybe it was extreme emotional exhaustion that had him trapped in the disturbing world around him, which seemed somewhat unfair. Without a choice, he simply had to let it run its course and proceed through it with the meager reassurance that none of it was real.

Walking through the foyer, Jeff noticed with slight concern that his stomach hurt. It was nothing too serious, but he felt a twinge with each step that was plenty annoying and too hard to ignore.

There was no sign of anybody being in the studio. No sound anywhere except his own. That wasn't right -there was always somebody at any hour in the studio building. The halls seemed blander than usual too -no posters on the walls or signs telling who was there actively working on something.

_There's gotta be somebody here. Maybe they're asleep somewhere, but there's never been a time where someone isn't here..._

The pull of the oddity had taken Jeff further from reality. He no longer felt aware of dreaming. The scene had swallowed him up, and he was part of it with no connection to the world of living to tell him he didn't have to worry about it being empty.

Out of curiosity, Jeff took the path he knew by heart down the hall to the studio space Dokken had rented in their recording time there. Maybe Mick and Don were there after all, but he was beginning to feel that was a hope brought out of denial.

Walking in, he saw a familiar, but vastly different sight. It was undoubtedly their studio recording space -with everything wrong with it. Things were missing from all corners. Jeff walked around the room, awestruck as to how much stuff was missing and wondering where it could have gone. 

The recording area had a chair and some wires along the wall. But the mixing board was gone. The amps were gone. Aside from one remaining, beat up microphone in the corner that appeared out of working order, all the mics were gone. There wasn't a guitar stand or a keyboard in sight -they were gone. The glass booth for sound isolation was still separated off in the corner, but it didn't have the speakers and equipment jacked up inside it. He didn't see it lying around anywhere else, so it was probably gone too.

Empty. The room was so _empty._

It was eerie. Jeff couldn't stand it. He shivered, feeling his stomach contract and chills spread over him as the pain shifted from a nuisance to true discomfort. His saliva seemed to double in his mouth, saltier than normal, and his throat felt thick and occluded. It was a helpless feeling of nausea that made him realize he inevitably would become ill sooner or later if he didn't find somebody around the hall.

Cautiously, he continued into the lounge by the door on the other side of the recording space, only finding one remaining sofa and a cabinet mounted on the wall. The table and chairs were gone, as well as all other paraphernalia. Going through the lounge to the adjacent studio space, he found a similar, empty, desolate scene in front of him. There wasn't a chair in this one, but there was a guitar in the corner.

Walking over and picking it up, Jeff examined the guitar. It looked like an ESP, but it had Gibson parts stuck on it. It also had half its strings broken off and a frayed wire connected to its plug that would be of little purpose to connect to an amp with.

"H-hello?" he stammered, swallowing thickly. "Is anyone here?"

Only Jeff's own words reverberated back to him off the walls through the silence. They twisted his stomach, which began throbbing with a sharp and cutting pain as the tightness of his throat grew stronger.

Hurriedly, but trying to keep a semblance of calm, Jeff set the guitar down. He did not run, but _walked_ with long strides in the direction of the bathroom, hunched over from the pain through his middle. He was afraid to run. Running would jostle his stomach and make the pain worse if it didn't make him sick faster. Jeff didn't want to get sick inside the building unless it was in a trash can or in the bathroom, and from what he saw, the items missing in all the rooms included garbage cans, so the latter was his best bet. The place was already a mess. He felt like it would be pathetic of him to make it worse -if involuntarily -without at least trying to prevent it.

Opening the bathroom door as he got to it, Jeff found everything empty and disturbed in there too. Closed off pipes were along the wall where most of the sinks should have been. Only two remained. One had a plastic bag over it, and the other had a dark rust stain through its porcelain basin with a sharp contrast. Repulsed, Jeff had to look away from it.

Looking toward the three stalls, one of which was without a door, Jeff saw two lacking toilets -just the sealed off pipe valves and flange where they should have been. The other had one, but it was obviously not in working order -missing a flush handle, no water in the bowl, and it appeared to have the pipe to the wall disconnected behind it.

Stepping aside from it, Jeff continued looking around, noticing there wasn't a trash can in the room either. There was the supply closet door, but with the state of the building, he didn't want to look for a trash can or trash bag in there in fear he'd open it and find a bunch of roaches crawling around. It wouldn't help the building or himself to wind up with those running out and about the room. Praying silently and willing himself to keep the contents of his stomach down just a little longer, he finally approached the broken toilet stall. _Screw it,_ Jeff thought. It was better than throwing up in that disgusting sink, and definitely better than on the floor for someone else to potentially have to deal with.

He stood, leaning weakly against the side of the stall where he'd be in reach bending over, waiting for his stomach to finally give the hard lurch that was coming. As much as he hated to get sick, now that he was in what he presumed a safe place, he wanted it to hurry up and happen. The nausea was becoming unbearably painful, and there was no warding it off now.

_Just let it happen and so I have it over with,_ he prayed. _I'll feel so much better._

With no warning, there was a screech from the pipes behind the wall on the other side of the room, a gurgle of plumbing, and like an eruption, vile and dirty water shot out forcefully from the rusty sink, sending a spray across the room. It stopped as soon as it started, but it was plenty to shoot across the bathroom and into the stalls. Discolored water ran down the wall in rivulets. It was disgusting.

Jumping back out of the stall, to the side, and missing the worst of the spray by mere inches, Jeff dry-gagged loudly. It echoed around the bathroom with nothing to muffle it from bouncing off the tiles, but nobody to hear it either. Between the sound echo, the spray, and the sight, Jeff couldn't recall a nastier encounter he'd had-and with half of his life spent on the road, he'd had plenty.

The next few seconds were a blur as Jeff turned and ran out of the bathroom, down the hall, outside of the building, and finally spilled his guts in a literal sense onto the concrete, unable to make it to the bushes around the side of the building as he'd hoped to.

The process felt longer and far more gross than Jeff remembered getting sick had seemed -which was gross enough in those times. He felt like he was suffocating, unable to draw a proper breath. Finishing and reaching a state of just dry-gagging, hiccuping, and gasping for air, he looked down at the mess he'd made with disgust. Then he did a double take upon another realization as the appearance set into his mind, placing his hands over his stomach as it guarding himself.

Blood. He threw up a lot and was baffled by how that much came out of him when he hadn't eaten breakfast -or at least not to his knowledge. But more alarming than how much of the contents of his stomach he'd lost was the blood. There was _so much blood_ in it. No way could that have meant anything good in even a small amount.

Also puzzling, Jeff realized he didn't feel incredibly sick or weak. With the amount of blood on the ground, he was sure he'd feel weak. But instead he felt more energy. He felt stronger. Better. The dizziness was gone. He did feel sick, and his stomach still hurt and lurched at the sight before him, but he didn't feel sick enough to think he'd just been that violently ill either.

"Oh, gross," he groaned quietly, not knowing how else to react. Did he dare go back inside to make a near hopeless attempt to find something to clean it up with? Go to the hospital and get checked out? Just get the hell out of dodge and pretend it hadn't happened?

Jeff stepped forward in the direction of the parking lot with the thought of going back to the van. Stopping short, he started to turn back toward the studio building, only to stop in his tracks again. He didn't really know what to do. Sitting in the van in the abandoned parking lot seemed like a safe option, but he couldn't sit there forever, and it didn't look like anyone was coming anytime soon. There wasn't much to do in the studio either aside from attempting to clean it up. Jeff didn't know if he could handle going back in there either.

_Well, I should,_ he thought to himself. He could potentially search through the upper floors and try and locate some of the stuff missing from the downstairs, or at least find something to wipe the dust off the recording room surfaces. That would be the best he could do without help from somebody -hopefully Mick and Don if he could just find them. Even then, it would take massive effort and a lot of time to get things back in a functional order -Jeff was certain a lot of the equipment in the recording areas and missing fixtures would have to be replaced, as well as the broken ones left behind. They could get it right, but it would never be quite the same as before.

It made him wonder how such a mess could have sneaked up on them to begin with. It had been some time, but not any time significantly long since they'd been there. Were things deteriorating before and he'd just refused to see it?

Walking back into the building and feeling a different sort of sickness -one that was less painful and violent, but enough to get him gagging at the sights, Jeff pondered where it might be possible to start. With a sad gaze, he picked up the damaged guitar in the adjacent recording room and tried to wipe off the film of dust with his finger and better identify it, soon finding himself coughing on the particles that flew off to circle in the air...

...and then there was a more forceful sensation of coughing that seemed too strong and real, as well as the sensation of lying flat on a soft surface parallel to the floor with darkness all around.

Before he'd entirely come back to reality, Jeff had his leg slung over the edge of the bed and he was pulling himself up to his feet as his still-twitching stomach urged him to. Without even turning on the lamp in the bedroom, he had himself in the bathroom and on the floor next to the toilet -and was more comforted than he felt he should have been to see everything connected to the walls and floors properly. After his dream, however, he could justify it to himself.

_What the fuck...? That was just too weird,_ he groaned inwardly.

Exhaustedly, he leaned his cheek against the rim, waiting to either be sick or for the feeling to pass, and nervously assuring himself that he wasn't going to get sprayed by stagnant pipe water this time.

He felt the ache in his stomach back down first. Closing his eyes and breathing deeply, the nausea seemed to fade over what felt to be a long time before the sound of light footsteps on the tile behind him made him jump.

"Hey Jeff, you're not getting sick in here, are you?"

Jeff lifted his head, his tired eyes meeting Don's. They looked the mirror image of his own -every bit as exhausted. The night had been rough.

"No," he murmured.

"You _feel_ sick? Heard you wake up sounding like you were choking on something, it's been over five minutes, and now you're in here like this. You're making me pretty nervous if you were trying to do that."

"No." Jeff sighed heavily. "I thought I did, but I just had this really weird nightmare. I kind of got sick there, and I guess I woke up still not entirely free of it when I was coming back to reality. It seems to have gone away though."

Don squinted and frowned. "Didn't get you as bad as the other one you were having last week did, did it?"

"No. This one has me confused -really weird. But I'm not really upset about it. Grossed out for one, and a little bewildered. Not anything bad."

"Think you're snapped out of it well enough to not go right back into it?"

"Don't think so." Jeff inwardly cringed at the thought of falling back asleep only to go right back into his nightmare at some other point. He'd done that before, and while it wasn't usually as bad coming back, he could always connect it to the rest of the dream. It was like walking away from a TV in the middle of a show and returning five minutes later -something was missing and it was interrupted, but it was all the same.

"And you feel okay now?" asked Don.

Jeff nodded, this time feeling to exhausted to respond. His head felt heavy and he would have dropped back to sleep on the bathroom floor if not for the hazy images still running through his mind. Between the high key night and the rather intense rush of emotions he'd had from the time they'd left their last show all together to the time he first went to bed, he was drained.

"Come on then," muttered Don through a thick, drawn out yawn. "Let's go back to bed. You can talk about it in the morning if it's still driving you crazy then."

He helped Jeff up, walking Jeff back to his bed, which was closer to the bathroom than his own. Having barely been awake, Don fell asleep as soon as he got back in bed, but as soon as he hit the mattress, Jeff's thoughts kicked into gear. He lay awake in the dark, trying to make sense of the bizarre images still floating in the back of his mind.

Jeff wondered if the blood and feeling better after getting sick suggested that what had been removed from his life was, at least for now, dangerous. Harmful and toxic. Maybe it hadn't always been that way, and maybe it wouldn't be that way by some point in the future. But for now, it was, and he was better off without it. What he'd lost had hurt him.

And maybe, he supposed, getting sprayed had something to do with trying to back everyone up only to get attacked in the end. Jeff really had tried to keep a mess from coming up in the band this time, unlike the first time they'd broken up -just as he'd tried to keep himself from making a mess getting sick in the dream. He'd refused to take sides, tried to play the keeper of peace, didn't let drugs decide who he backed up, and even excused a few actions in order to not play sides. He'd ended up feeling worse off for it -hit with a nasty blast of drama. He'd not only been hurt, but his ability to trust somebody who he once trusted for everything was damaged to a point where he didn't see it coming back soon if it ever did. 

He wasn't the only one though. Everything in Dokken, like the studio, had been in complete disarray and nearly torn apart by it. They would try to fix it together, and things would be okay, but there would be changes made and it wouldn't be the same. In most respects, Jeff saw that as okay. With the point they'd reached, maybe it didn't need to be the same.

If his conclusions to what the chaotic dream scape meant weren't right and none of that had been significant, Jeff could only decide for certain that it was all weird, and downright gross. No way was he going into the studio without Don or Mick right by his side the next time. Until he saw it with everything in place where it should have been, he didn't think he could make himself go in there alone without seeing the images that still burned in the back of his mind.

But the emptiness of the studio and the eerie feeling he'd had through it had meant something that he couldn't deny. Those feelings didn't lie that what was missing in reality was not just something, but someone, whom Jeff was going to miss a lot.

And inevitably, he missed George Lynch already as he dropped back off to sleep.


	2. You Broke My Heart, Now it's Not the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week before his first time recording in the studio with Dokken and without George Lynch, Jeff remembers his nightmare, and finds he's not the only one struggling to fully adjust when things are no longer the same, as Reb Beach is left shaken by a nightmare of his own.

Almost a year later, Jeff found himself thinking about his nightmare on the night George Lynch left the band as he was settling down to sleep in his bunk on the bus.

It baffled him at first as to why the images of the empty, broken studio had suddenly implanted themselves in his mind when he hadn't thought of the dream in months. For a couple of weeks after it, yes, but never as vividly as the night of it -until now.

It was the last week of the tour. As soon as they were arriving back in town, they were going into the studio to record new material.

_That_ had to be part of it, Jeff realized. He didn't understand why lying awake trying to fall asleep was giving him such vivid images of the nightmarish studio though. Usually he was excited to go in and record new songs for Dokken, and if he was ever too alert to fall asleep before going into the studio, he usually got images of working with the equipment, and goofing off in free time around the building. Not a bunch of stuff missing.

Except there would be something missing.

It occurred to Jeff that this would be the first official Dokken release without George. His first time recording for Dokken without George by his side.

_It is happening though_ , Jeff assured himself. Just as he'd found himself considering in the dream, it was possible to fix things. They wouldn't be the same in the dream, nor were things the same in Dokken, but maybe it would work out.

Comforting himself with the thoughts, Jeff began to see images of a more filled-in studio in his mind. He could see Don and Mick in it. He didn't see George there, but he also didn't see constant arguing. Maybe minor disagreements, but more willingness to work together.

_I think this is all going to be okay. Maybe it'll even be fun._

With that, Jeff rolled over and dropped off to sleep.

He awoke some time later with a flinch and a start, heart twitching.

_What...?_ Jeff squinted in the dark. He wasn't having a nightmare to his knowledge -or any dream at all he could sense that would have woken him up. He didn't think he'd heard any loud noise either.

Then, feeling another light poke in his ribs, he realized what woke him up.

Sitting up fast, Jeff turned on his flashlight to break the darkness and quickly turned around to meet a stricken, wide set of dark blue eyes that timidly looked up from between sleep-mussed curtains of long, auburn hair. 

Reb Beach. Something had him shaken up pretty significantly -Jeff didn't have to ask to figure that out as concern immediately took over. He knew what that stricken look meant and the feelings it was carried on. He knew it because he'd worn that same stricken look for the longest two weeks of his life.

"What's the matter, Reb?"

Jeff internally swore, having forgotten to whisper -realizing as Reb's eyes widened with panic and he froze still holding a finger up for a good five seconds until it was safe to assume neither Mick nor Don had been woken up.

"I am _sorry,"_ Jeff whispered, his features turning overly apologetic. "What is it?"

"I need -if it's okay with you -I need to talk to someone, and- ...I'm sorry to wake you up over this, Jeff, I-"

"It's fine; don't worry about getting any of us up if you need something. I don't have a problem with it." Jeff rubbed his eyes, coming more awake and aware. "What's wrong?"

"I just figured if anyone on this bus would understand, it'd be you," Reb continued in a whisper, still timid and shamefaced.

"You wanna talk about it in the lounge?" asked Jeff, sensing that Reb was very shy about what was bothering him and wanted it only heard by somebody he could trust to understand. It wouldn't help to accidentally wake up Don or Mick, and they'd already risked that once.

Reb nodded eagerly, and Jeff got up.

"We'll go to the front -I don't know if Mick's in his bunk or on the couch in the back, but walking around with the light if we have to turn around is more chance of waking Don up."

"That's okay. I'm sorry, I tried to put it off until morning, but-"

"It's alright, Reb. If something's bothering you this much, by all means come get me." Grabbing his flashlight, Jeff made his way with Reb to the front.

"What's going on?" he asked, sliding into the seat after Reb sat down, assuming an anxious position, sitting slightly curled in on himself.

"This is going to sound silly, because I know it wasn't real, but I had this really weird dream, and I can't get it out of my head."

"Nightmare?" Jeff felt a sinking feeling inside himself.

"I don't know if I can call it a nightmare or not-" Reb stopped short, shrugging and searching for words. "It wasn't anything really scary or painful. Except for a couple of things that were unsettling, and they're -I can't stop seeing them and they're driving me nuts. I don't really know how to describe it..."

He trailed off, slumping forward, running his hands over his face and shaking his head.

The sinking settled with an uneasy feeling on Jeff's chest. He fidgeted slightly before speaking with discomfort.

"I understand what you mean by that, Reb. You don't have to try and describe it if you can't. And I'm sorry you're having to go through that tonight and feeling like that, because it's not fun at all seeing it after it's over. It's really not."

He watched Reb, who stayed silent for a minute, propped against the table on his elbows, hands on the sides of his face and fingers pushing up in his hair. Jeff could feel Reb's anxiety, the same as he'd felt that night and just as strong watching him. He recognized and knew well the heavy eyelids beginning to droop again as the shock of waking up and coming back to reality wore off, sidled with the still-tensed body too disturbed by what it had experienced in the alternate world of a dreaming state to return to sleep.

"Jeff," he finally continued in just above a whisper, tone just as tensed as his body as he stayed in his folded-over posture. "This is going to seem like a long shot when I ask this, but have you ever had a dream that you couldn't stop seeing like that where you're in some place or building that used to be familiar to you, but everything seems _empty_ inside? Like ...well, the inside structure was perfectly intact and in great shape -but you know where half the stuff that made it familiar to you is missing, and you can't find anybody inside who you would usually be with there? And then -I guess this stuff would be more specific to what I saw, but most of the stuff missing were the things that belonged to everyone I couldn't find... And I couldn't get through to all the parts of it, because even though the structure was perfectly intact on the inside, there were barricades up in the hall and all this commotion outside -people in crews trying to demolish it from the outside. And toward the end where I woke up, the walls and ceilings finally started to crack and I kept getting hit with plaster dust falling -so I had to run out even though I didn't want to. I know that sounds crazy, I'm sorry, but..."

"It's not something you have to be sorry about." Jeff sighed deeply and held up a hand. "Almost any dream like that is going to seem crazy looking back on it. Actually, I have had something -not exactly the same, but along the same lines. There was structure damage, but the opposite. It looked perfectly intact on the outside, but everything was broken and damaged inside. But with a place you used to recognize being all empty -stuff missing and not knowing where anyone is? Yeah, Reb, I know exactly what you're talking about."

Thinking to his reasons for his own dream and comparing to what Reb had dealt with in his mind, Jeff could understand the differences between what he'd seen and what Reb had seen. He couldn't tell which one was more disturbing. Maybe not having so much damage within was better, but knowing the whole world seemed to be attacking and seeing the structure collapse around seemed like a terrifying thought to Jeff without experiencing it.

He looked up, seeing Reb nod slowly.

"I think I know why. Knowing what you saw, and what I saw -it makes sense now. And I'm not saying anything bad, because I'm alright with where things are now. And I'm sure it'll be okay as I get used to the differences-"

"I get it," said Jeff. "And no, I know you're not saying that in a bad way. I know what you're saying. Same way -I'm excited to see what happens, and I'm alright with the way things are, even if they are different and I'm getting used to it-"

"-but part of you still wishes things could have stayed the way they were before everything got screwed up and been alright," Reb finished in the all-too familiar barely awake but too psyched out too sleep voice, not bothering to tiptoe around the painful truth for both of them.

Jeff lightly touched his hand to Reb's shoulder and closed his eyes, feeling the sinking feeling that had settled in his chest move in tighter on his heart, reminding him of the emptiness he still felt there after the wounds had somewhat healed.

"I'm sorry, Reb."

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off a real nightmare I had after ending an abusive friendship (it was in my high school instead of a studio -but same idea -empty library except for some water damaged books and one bookcase left behind the circulation desk, classrooms with only a couple of chairs left, etc.), and it gave me a bad enough feeling as to how Jeff may have felt when George Lynch left Dokken for the second time in the 90s. Also, while it may be mean of me to have inflicted this on Jeff, I did go easier on him. I stopped him from opening that closet full of bugs. And I wish it was only the sink that had sprayed me. It wasn't. It was worse. I almost did it, but I didn't have it in me to do that to Jeff.


End file.
